WATCH: Mesmerizing NASA Video Shows 'Canyon Of Fire' On The Sun

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center combined two days of satellite data to release a spectacularly trippy video Thursday of a "magnetic filament of solar material" that erupted on the Sun in late September.

According to NASA, a 200,000 mile long piece of filament dislodged from the Sun and ripped through the its atmosphere, leaving an impression of a "canyon of fire" in its wake where magnetic fields formerly held the filament in place. The roiling inferno seen in the video is not fire, however: the Sun is made of plasma, which is composed of "particles so hot that their electrons have boiled off, creating a charged gas that is interwoven with magnetic fields," NASA noted.

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Zoë Schlanger is Frontpage Editor at TPM. Zoë was a TPM intern in 2011, and prior to returning here she was editor in chief of NYU Local, the alternative independent student news site at NYU. Zoë has interned at places like the Nation, InsideClimate News, The Rachel Maddow Show and Gothamist. She can be reached at zoe@talkingpointsmemo.com.